My dog Buddy is 7 years old. Last Tuesday night he had his first "episode" which we have came to the conclusion now was a seizure. He had lost all control of his bodily functions, and was kicking vigorously, when the seizure was over he was disoriented, and extremely thirsty. At one point before he had regained full consciousness he was growling and showing his teeth to myself, and my father. That is NOT like Buddy at all. So the vet said to monitor his behavior incase it was heat induced. So almost a week and a half went by and yesterday he had another one that lasted about 5 minutes. Same thing as before, disoriented, urination, and extreme thirst, but this time without the aggression. We called our vet and we will be taking him on Monday. So I went to bed and was woke up to him kicking the walls, he had another seizure at 3:30 A.M. I am so terrified that we are going to have to put him down. I have never been on any of these sites, but I read that Seizures is common in Shepherds, so I was hoping that maybe I could possibly gain some helpful feedback.

I feel for your pain right now,you feel so helpless when something like this happens.
I personally don't know much about seizures in GSD's,but hang on some will be by to offer some advice and guidance.
My thoughts are with you.

A 5 minute long seizure is very serious, I agree, try to take him today.

A lot of dogs do really well on seizure medication! The vet will want run a few tests for things like low blood sugar and his thyroid, maybe a few other things.

If he has another seizure, turn off all the lights and TVs, get the room at least dim and quiet. He is unconscious during the seizure but if it helps you, you can pet them and tell them it will be okay. Make sure he doesn't bump into anything or scrape his mouth along the ground, Xena did that once and I almost passed out when I saw all of the blood from a few tiny cuts. After the seizure, he will be in the post-ictal phase where they are concious but not really all there yet. It's normal, they will do things like pace, drink or eat endlessly, drool, walk into walls. Just gently redirecting Xena with a little push on her shoulder or turning her around by her collar helps, but the best thing you can do is to get him to lie down if at all possible and take a spoonful of plain vanilla ice cream to bring his blood sugar up. Even if blood sugar was not the cause of the seizure, it will drop during and if you don't bring it up, it can trigger another. Try to get him to relax and take a nap, but if he is aggressive (also normal after seizures, they are very confused) just let him be as long as he isn't hurting himself. Sometimes they have to pace it out. Write down EVERYTHING that happened before, during, and after, ASAP while it's still fresh, so you can show it to the vet. Keeping a log of seizures helps you see patterns you may have missed otherwise! Temperature outside, strange behavior, something he ate, everything.

Almost forgot the most important thing! Stay calm!! It is so scary, trust me I know, but if when he wakes up you are in a panic, that will stress him out even more and he needs a calm environment. Don't be upset by the aggression, it's not Buddy it's the seizure. If you have any other dogs take them out of the room, also.

When we fostered a seizure dog, the emergency vet started her on phenobarbitol (anti-seizure med) for the weekend, with instructions to follow up with our rescue's regular vet. We also were sent home with a needle-less syringe of diazapam and instructions to insert it rectally during a seizure to stop it. Once this dog started on phenobarbitol though the seizures stopped. It took us about a month to figure out the perfect doseage (with some bloodwork), but she did not seize again. The meds were very inexpensive -- I filled a script at Walmart pharmacy for the rescue for under $20 for a month's worth, and she was a very big girl (over 80#). The only inconvenient thing was figuring out for someone always to be home exactly 12 hours apart for dosing.

She's thriving now in her adoptive home! The medication protocol has worked very well for her.

Seizures are terrifying while they are going on. The important thing is to get them under control if you can, and that takes a few vet visits.

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